


The Cluster Halloween Exquisite Corpse 2019

by br42, citrusella, Doc_Cairo, E350tb



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Exquisite Corpse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-12-01 23:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20937320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/br42/pseuds/br42, https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusella/pseuds/citrusella, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doc_Cairo/pseuds/Doc_Cairo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/E350tb/pseuds/E350tb
Summary: Lars tells a horror story but loses track of it, or; a bunch of fic writers do an exquisite corpse and hilarity ensues.Written by DocCairo, citrusella, E350, love-killed-the-superstar and br42.





	The Cluster Halloween Exquisite Corpse 2019

**Author's Note:**

> So the Cluster did an EC and here it is. 'Twas fun!
> 
> The underlined passages are what the following author had to work from - for those who don't know how an Exquisite Corpse works, we got those two or so sentences - and _only_ those two sentences - with which to continue the story.
> 
> This was run by Crooked Mantis, so all credit for the idea goes to him!

**The Cluster Halloween Exquisite Corpse 2019**

**[Author: Doc_Cairo]**

"I was locked away for 5000 years."

"I stood in one place for 6000 years!"

"No no no!" Peridot interrupted. "Your doing it wrong! We're supposed to be telling scary stories!"

"I mean…" Lapis said. "It's scary in an existential dread way."

"I dunno what that word means… but what she said." Spinel added.

"Yeah, but that's stuff that actually happened! You're supposed to make stuff up!"

"That's a really long time!" Padparadscha reacted. A few moments passed. "What?! That's even longer!"

It was nearly midnight and beside the warp pad in the town square there was a small bonfire on which hot dogs, Smores, and other less appropriate foodstuffs were being prepared. The Little Homeworld Harvest Festival was Peridot's brainchild, heavily influenced by human traditions absorbed from her favorite show. Gems and humans alike, including a visiting Spinel, were gathered for "scary stories". But Peridot hadn't prepared any of her own and her participants didn't quite get the point.

"I got this…" A cloaked figure emerged from the shadows. He held out a hand; a glove with knives for fingers. His face was concealed by a hockey mask, but the skin beneath was pink. 

"Our story begins… on the moon." He said after some hesitation. "Two human astronauts have been-"

"Captain Lars has an idea, but he's gonna make it up as he goes!" Lars sighed as he pulled back the cloak revealing his pink hair.

"-like I was saying… two astronauts were sent to explore-"

"I can't hear you through that thing!" Spinel shapeshifted one ear comically large. Lars groaned and removed the mask.

"There, is that better?!"

"Oh no, that face is horrifying, mask back on!" Lapis teased. Lars frowned.

"She's just messing with you." Peridot elbowed him. "Please continue with your scary space travel stor- wait, this isn't a true story right?"

"No."

"Please continue then."

"Two human astronauts were sent to the moon-" Lars rushed to avoid further interruption. "-because scientists discovered an alien base on the dark side."

"...my winter house." Lapis muttered, but not loud enough to interrupt.

"As their capsule docked with the mysterious building, the astronauts felt a mysterious feeling of-"

"What do they look like?" Another gem asked.

"... It's not important to the story."

"Well I think it is."

"...fine. You know Steven & Connie? Imagine it's Steven & Connie."

"I can visualize that!" The gem nodded.

"Anyone else need to interject?!" Lars asked loudly. There was a brief silence. "Ok! Moonbase. Human astronauts. Steven & Connie. Moving on!"

\---

"It's not a lot…" Connie read the small screen inside the airlock. "But there is atmosphere out there."

"So we could breathe without our suits?" Steven asked.

"The oxygen's still thin. We'd get light headed. And I'd rather not risk taking in any foreign bacteria."

"Ok, helmets on then." Steven stared at the still sealed airlock. "Alien base!!!" He whispered with excitement.

"Keep your guard up." Connie engaged the airlock, laser rifle in her other hand.

* * *

**[Author: Citrusella]**

The door opened, and the two peered out into the base. The lights were on, but it looked like nobody was home. It wasn't like the dark silent base of Earth's moon, or the overgrown jungle of the… Jungle Moon—though it wasn't that it was _un_like them, either. The doors were the same, as were the stairs and the walls and even some of the murals, in as far as the basic look of the leaders present in them, even as the planets were less or different.

But for all its similarities to other bases, there was something _off_ about it. Eerie. Like something haunting—unspeakable, even—had gone down here. Recently.

It zapped away any excitement either of them had had about this trip.

"Hello?" Steven called out, receiving only an echo in response. "Anyone there?"

"We heard you might want a visit?" No answer. "Or… or help?" Nothing.

The two looked into each other's faces, knowing the lack of response was in itself a response when the whole reason they'd ended up here was a silent transmission, which could have been anything from a friendly message to an accident…

To distress. Or a trap.

With only a little trepidation when the setting probably called for much more, they jumped out of the ship and onto the surface, expecting to be able to launch themselves with a few good hops to the other end of the room, where they might be better able to assess the situation confronting them.

…Except Steven flopped onto the ground like a surprised fish as Connie barely caught herself with a masterful knee bend.

"Huh, I guess this place is denser than Earth's moon, so the extra gravity is making us heavier than we're used to being," Connie posited, a hand to her chin.

"Wait, I can't moon boy this? What?!" Steven cried, opting to stay put face down on the smooth floor for a few seconds as if in defeat. "How come we didn't know about this before we jumped off the ship?"

"Maybe the gravity engine was still engaged? It does emulate stuff like that, after all." She extended her free hand toward him as he rolled over onto his back and began to prop himself up. "You okay? You fell kinda hard."

"Aw, it was nothing. Just like a belly flop into a pool. If the water was really thick ice instead." He flinched at the thought as he grabbed her hand.

"…Wouldn't that be the same as the pool being empty?"

Steven's eyes widened. "Come on, Connie, I don't have a death wish!"

She snorted into a giggle. "Coulda fooled me!"

* * *

**[Author: E350]**

Steven rubbed his arm as they entered the decrepit old house, swallowing as he took in the old paintings in the once-magnificent entrance hall. It was just a normal house, he told himself, he definitely didn’t have a death wish for wanting to go inside. He just wanted to find the band! And who knew what might happen if they took the time to call the authorities?

Still, he wished they’d gone missing somewhere nice. Like a zoo, or a chocolate factory.

“Hey, I found something!”

Connie pointed to an unplugged cord, running across the floor and into a small room off to the side. The two glanced at each other - then, slowly, they began to follow it.

“M-maybe this is a surprise,” mused Steven. “We’ll come in and they’ll turn on the light and yell ‘happy Lief Erikson Day!’ and-”

He trailed off.

The room wasn’t particularly impressive - just an old, weathered rumpus room. It was dusty and cold, and the coffee table had broken.

Yet it was not this that so shocked Steven and Connie, but the gigantic painting on the wall - a giant, gold-framed oil painting, apparently freshly painted, of Sadie Miller.

* * *

**[Author: love-killed-the-superstar]**

Attention now fully on the painting before them, Connie found her feet moving of their own accord, drawing her into the world of canvas and brush strokes. It wasn't so much the fact that there was a painting of Sadie in such a place, but – well, where in the stars had it come from? Why did the paint still look wet to touch? What would an (admittedly very talented) oil painter be doing hiding behind corners and painting in the shadows, anyway? And with such a heavy and expensive frame, who would have time to haul it up there without either of them noticing before now?

“This whole situation is... bizarre,” Connie muttered, wide-eyed and bewildered.

Steven wholeheartedly agreed with that particular sentiment.

He hung back, scrutinising the painting. While Connie was focusing on the absurdity, the impossibility of the situation at hand, Steven had learned by now, after years of gem missions and invasions and otherworldly occurrences, to throw all logic out of the window in a scenario like this. Realism was just a formality at this point.

It was the subject of the painting that made Steven's skin crawl. Sadie looked so... sad. Haunted, even. The look in her eyes conveyed a sadness and fear that dug into something primal in his heart, the pit of his stomach sinking the longer he looked at it.

“Connie, this feels – wrong,” he stammered. Something wasn't right, something definitely wasn't right – and surely, by now, they'd be used to keeping a cool head in a situation like this, but they were getting sucked in.

He stepped forward, reaching for Connie's hand.

“I think we need to stop looking at this painting,” he said as steadily as he could manage, finding Connie's hand and squeezing it tight. She had her back to him while obsessing over the oddity of it all, running her free hand over the intricate gold frame, fingertips brushing against the wet sheen of the paint.

“But it doesn't make sense, Steven! What's it doing here, how did it get here? Don't you want to find out the truth? Discover the mystery of it?”

“No! Not all all!” Steven tugged on her hand again, more urgently this time. “Connie, I really think we need to stop. We – we need to find Sadie. Please, let's just go.”

He was met with silence. Then, as Connie turned her head towards him with an agonising slowness, he recoiled in horror.

With the same haunted expression as Sadie wore in the oil painting, Connie was being pulled into the canvas arm-first, her hand already indistinguishable from the muddled depths of Sadie Killer's deep black cloak.

* * *

**[Author: br42]**

The unnatural tug was irresistible, the painting looming larger in Connie's vision. The girl screamed as she struggled fruitlessly.

It seemed like the thing to do.

"Aaaah!"

With a fleeting sense of pressure, the threshold of the canvas was crossed and Connie became two-dimensional.

More screaming followed.

Brushing Connie's hand from her jacket, Sadie Killer looked somber. "You thought you-"

"Aaaah!"

Sadie suppressed a frown. "You thought you knew true horror but now-"

"Aaaah!"

The ghoulish musician gave Connie a _look_. "Hey, stop that! I'm trying to be ominous over here."

"Aaa- Oh." Connie suddenly felt embarrassed on top of being deeply unmoored. She rubbed the back of her neck, which felt really odd when you lacked a Z-axis. "Go ahead."

Sadie Killer nodded. Her voice dropping into a lower register, she said, "You thought you knew true horror but now you will witness the terror beyond..." She paused dramatically. _"The Wall."_

A beat passed.

"Um, is not witnessing pure terror an option?" asked Connie.

Sadie Killer's expression was completely unflappable. "Yeah, sure. We'll just stay here instead."

A minute passed. Connie tried to move but couldn't leave the confines of the portrait. The room beyond was visible but utterly inaccessible. Her phone wasn't getting a signal, which had honestly been too much to hope for.

Absolutely nothing happened.

Sadie put away the compact mirror she'd been using to touch up her stage makeup. "So, terror?"

Connie sighed. "Yeah. Let's go."

\---

There was a narrow gap at the side of the portrait's interior, not that narrow mattered when you were two-dimensional. Sadie led on and as the light of the room beyond the portrait retreated into the distance, it grew steadily darker.

By the time her stocky guide was little more than a dim outline, Connie noticed light ahead. Approaching, it grew harsh. Connie raised a hand to shield her eyes, which didn't work since she was depthless: she literally couldn't look away.

There were words. A wall of words, towering as high and wide as the eye could see. An ocean of prose stretched out before her and Sadie motioned for Connie to look more closely.

Something familiar caught Connie's eye. Her name! And there was Steven's. Lars and Sadie were mentioned in places, the gems, people familiar and unfamiliar visible like constellations in a surreal sky of script. These were stories about... her?!

Connie squinted, reading. Then she recoiled, pointing. "I just died! A mission went wrong and I was killed and now it's going on and on about Steven feeling guilty. But... that never happened. What is this place?"

"Read on," intoned Sadie.

Connie looked elsewhere: Connie and Steven were getting married, complete with a fifty page description of their wedding cake.

She looked: Connie was a vampire being trained by Pearl, who was also a vampire.

She looked: a grammatical trainwreck was describing her parents' divorce.

She looked: Connie was helping Steven and his new stepmother, Jasper, decorate the Beach House for the holidays.

She looked, and looked, and looked. It was madness. A thousand stories and more, a thousand Connies, each existing for the amusement of distant and unknowable beings.

Connie wasn't squeamish. She'd read Lovecraft; R.L. Stein; _Coraline_ (movie and book, both). But this was beyond her and she collapsed to her knees.

"Fanfic," said Sadie. "It's all fanfic, and so are we. Now you know true terror. The terror... _beyond the fourth wall."_

Connie glimpsed a fic tagged 'Kevin/Connie'. Her last tether to sanity snapped and Connie came undone.

**Author's Note:**

> _*Twilight Zone theme*_


End file.
